Woman partied over pregnancy, then killed pedestrian

ST. PAUL, Minn - A 27-year-old woman admitted her night of partying included mixing wine and the painkiller Percocet before she sped through downtown Minneapolis and fatally hit a man.

The reason Teisha Yovonne Randle was celebrating last October: She'd just learned she was pregnant.

Randle pleaded guilty Monday, April 8, to two counts of criminal vehicular homicide in the death of Austin Conley, an Augsburg College student.

Advertisement

Hennepin County District Judge Daniel Moreno accepted her plea and set sentencing for April 22.

A prosecutor told the judge the state would ask for a four-year sentence. Randle's defense attorney said she'd be asking for three years.

Randle, of St. Paul, dabbed tears as she answered questions from Assistant County Attorney Krista White and defense attorney Carolina Lamas. Conley's family members, sitting in the front row of the gallery, also sobbed.

The family declined to comment after the hearing but said they'd be giving victim-impact statements when Randle is sentenced.

Afterward, Lamas said her client was very sorry for what she'd done -- so sorry that she ended her pregnancy after being charged.

"She feels she can't bring a life into this world knowing she's taken one," Lamas said.

Conley, 20, of Minneapolis was struck by a speeding Chevy Lumina about 2:50 a.m. on Oct. 27 as he and some friends crossed Third Street North at First Avenue North in the Minneapolis Warehouse District.

The car hit him twice. The first impact knocked him out of his black canvas sneakers and threw him into the air. The car hit him again as he fell and dragged him down the street.

Despite witness statements to the contrary, Randle denied that she'd been drinking vodka or had been swerving in and out of downtown Minneapolis traffic.

Randle, who was studying to be a pharmacy technician, was driving on a revoked license. It had never been reinstated after she pleaded guilty to driving while impaired in 2006.

She had been placed on a year's probation in that case but violated it by failing to attend a court-ordered Mothers Against Drunk Driving victim-impact panel and not paying restitution and her fine.

On the night she killed Conley, she had been partying at a friend's house and the Imperial Club in Minneapolis. She told Moreno she'd had a glass of wine at the friend's house because a friend was celebrating a birthday and Randle was celebrating her pregnancy. Randle claimed that the wine was the only alcohol she'd consumed that night.

But witnesses said she drank at the house from a bottle of peach-flavored Ciroc vodka she brought. At the Imperial Club, witnesses later told investigators, she mixed at least one drink for herself from a bottle of Grey Goose vodka she'd chipped in to buy for her table.

Randle had also taken some strong medicine that night. She has admitted to taking at least four Percocet, a painkiller a doctor had prescribed her for migraines. And she also had taken some Robitussin with codeine for a cough.

The criminal complaint said that when the group got up to leave, witnesses said Randle was "wobbling as she walked" and that at least two of her friends questioned whether she was sober enough to drive.

Witnesses -- including an off-duty sheriff's deputy -- reported seeing her speed and swerve through traffic, cutting off other cars.

Randle told the judge she was speeding in an attempt to make it through a row of stoplights. She'd made it through two. Conley was crossing at the third.

"You were driving very fast downtown, right?" Lamas asked her.

"Yes."

"You were going faster than the speed limit?"

"Yes."

The speed limit is 30 mph. Randle told the judge she was going 35 to 40 mph. The off-duty sheriff's deputy estimated her speed at perhaps 50 mph when she hit Conley.

Under questioning by White, Randle acknowledged speeding but denied speeding up after hitting Conley.

"I never sped up," she said.

She also denied that she drove through a red light at the intersection where she killed Conley.

"That light was yellow," she said.

Officers found Randle through tipsters. She told police she thought somebody had thrown a rock at her windshield.

Randle initially was charged with two counts of criminal vehicular homicide. In January, prosecutors added a third count, alleging she committed the crime while intoxicated.

Randle is free on $150,000 bail until sentencing.

The four-year prison term that White said she would ask for is the maximum under the state's sentencing guidelines.

Lamas said she would ask the judge for a more lenient sentence of three years and planned to argue that Randle was taking responsibility.